Do you remember the scene in the movie “Saving Private Ryan” where after storming a machine gun nest and losing their medic, the Americans have to deal with how to handle a prisoner they captured?  Some say shoot him on the spot others disagree.  They know they can’t take him with them as he will slow them down.  After much vigorous debate Captain Miller (Tom Hanks) decides to untie him, point him toward the American line and tell him to keep walking, with the hope that he will be captured by the advancing American forces. 

Later in the movie as Miller’s unit is in a pitched battle to the last man, the released German prisoner is among those killing Miller’s men.  After reinforcements arrive to turn the battle in the Americans favor and the remaining Germans surrender, the former prisoner smiles and nods to the soldier in Miller’s unit that acted as translator and argued for sparing him as if to say, “Hey, how’s it goin’ pal?”  The soldier lowers his rifle and kills the German.

I am reminded of this by the current situation with Yemen.  Started under President Bush was the insane idea of releasing enemy combatants where they can find their way back to the battlefield.  This stupid policy was, until recently, going to be accelerated under President Obama.  Either we are at war or we are not.  You can’t fight a war with half measures.  Either you fight it to win or let the enemy have their way.  If we are in a war and we capture the enemy they stay captured until the war is over.  We don’t need a bunch of lawyers standing on the sidelines tapping their foot and their watches and saying, “how much longer are you going to hold these people without charging them?”  Answer: until the war ends or hell freezes over, whichever comes first.

 Is It a War Yet Mr. President?

 Backed into a corner, on his fifth (?) try to explain what his administration is doing on the War on Terror (am I allowed to call it that?), he actually called it a war, at least against Al Qaida.  He has spent the better part of his first year in office giving the back of his hand to the Bush administration.  But after seven years of Bush keeping us safe and two terrorist attacks on our soil this year with Obama at the helm and his poll numbers sinking, he has come to the realization that he owns this now.

The tough Harry Truman talk is nice (“The Buck Stops Here”), but it is just words until you actually do something with the buck that just stopped on your desk.  Why is the spectacularly incompetent Janet Napolitano still drawing a salary?  In Obama’s world it seems to be that what he means when he says the buck stops here is that he is the only one subject to firing and since we can’t fire him, everyone under him keeps on keeping on.  But who appointed these people?  It was Obama.  So he should recognize that he blundered and if the underlings don’t have enough sense to fall on their swords and resign, he should flat out fire them.

 Vacations are Important.  Anti-terrorism, Not So Much

 After the terror attack at Fort Hood, you would think that perhaps President Obama would be a little more responsive to another attempted attack, but hey, he was on an Hawaiian vacation.  Nobel Prize?  Chicago trying to win a bid for the Olympics?  President Obama will travel across the sea for that.  But an attempted attack on America?  Chill, baby, chill.  How about his director of National Counterterrorism, Michael Leiter, taking a ski vacation?  Just because stopping such an attack might be considered counterterrorism and just because that organization just failed miserably at stopping such an attack, and just because we didn’t know why it failed or if another attack might be on the way, why interrupt time with the family over that?  Family time is important, so said his boss. Don’t worry, Mike, we’ll wait.

Behind the Curve

It seems that with each attempt the enemy is one step ahead of us.  So discussions heated up about these new body scanners that can find anything, so it is claimed.  Don’t get me wrong, I am a big advocate of technology, but I guess the real problem is best summed up by one pundit comparing our methods to the Israelis:

“The Israelis look for terrorists, we look for tweezers.”

Instead of reading body scanners, perhaps we should be training the TSA agents in reading body language.  That’s what the Israelis do.  If you are a Palestinian, sorry, but you go in a different line and you get more closely screened and questioned.  You may pass, but you are going to be thoroughly checked out. We should do the same.  Where is your passport from?  What visa stamps do you have in your passport indicating where you have been?  Why don’t you have any luggage Mr. Abdulmutallab?  Why did you buy a one way ticket?  Who are you staying with in Detroit?  I see you paid cash for your ticket, how much cash do you have left for your trip after you land in Detroit?  Do you have a credit card?  No?  Hmmm…maybe you should wait over there, while we check further.

 No technology is foolproof.  Having worked in technology for over thirty years I can say that with some degree of confidence.  It only takes one failure of the technology for a disaster to strike.  But if we spend less time trying to find that box cutter, shampoo bottle, tweezers, jar of honey, etc., and spend more time spotting someone who doesn’t look like they are on a nice business trip or a visit to relatives or who otherwise fit the profile of a terrorist, that’s right I said it: profile, we could probably become a lot safer without having to lock the bathrooms for the last hour of the flight.  If we had pulled the young Abdulmutallab aside and questioned him, he probably would have cracked like an egg.  Does anyone think for a minute that this kid would have given off no body language signals if questioned by a trained professional?  The right combination of skilled human observers and questioners along with technology, is what we need to be safer.   Rather than this:  We”re the TSA and You Can Count on Us!

Intelligence Sprawl

We also need to collapse the intelligence arms of our government back into one and shut the others down.  Roll back Homeland Security into the Department of Defense, put the myriad intelligence gathering arms back into the CIA, make people accountable and lessen the need for a coordinating center to gather intelligence from a dozen agencies correlate it and send it back out to the dozen agencies.  All that does is create more fiefdoms that don’t want to talk to the dummies in that other agency who aren’t as smart as we are.  As the old saying goes, “When everyone’s responsible, no one is responsible.”  Government is neither nimble nor overly cooperative.  The fewer handoffs between agencies necessary to connect the dots, the better off we will all be.

I am sure you all recall the video played ad nauseum starring the Reverend Wright railing against America defending itself.  It now seems to accurately describe the results of the new hope and change administration.  After his worldwide apology tour, and banning the term “War on Terror,” replacing it with the limp “Overseas Contingency Operation,” so that, like his presidential campaign, no one would know what he actually meant or stood for, his own chickens are coming home to roost.

Actions Have Consequences

The left used to attack the Bush administration’s approach because being tough on terrorists only served to aid them in their recruiting.  Maybe so, but I am less concerned about lines of recruits in Afghanistan than crazed terrorists in New York.  Obama’s apology tour shows his weakness and as the terrorist mindset abhors weakness, it encourages attacks.  So what would you prefer, attacks on American soil, or an uptick in recruiting on the other side of the world?

War vs. Law and Order

Bush recognized the War on Terror for what it was, a direct attack on the United States and our way of life.  In a war, you go after the enemy, you don’t wait for him to come to you.  You take prisoners and hold them, until the conflict is over.  You dismantle their ability to wage war.  It is aggressive and proactive.  It is the way America has prevailed in wartime.

The Obama approach is Law an Order.  Each act is seen as separate an isolated and as a crime to be investigated and prosecuted after the fact.  First responders are more important than the first wave of Marines.  To quote today’s Wall Street Journal:

Brian Jenkins, who studies terrorism for the Rand Corporation, says there were more terror incidents (12), including thwarted plots, on U.S. soil in 2009 than in any year since 2001. The jihadists don’t seem to like Americans any better because we’re closing down Guantanamo.

But the Obama Administration is currently considering releasing prisoners held in Guantanamo to Yemen.  How long do you think it will be before they are back on the front lines trying to kill us?

Add to the mix the Obama administration’s, or should I say Eric Holder’s, decision to try the 9/11 terrorists in a civilian court.  Holder’s testimony before Congress justifying his decision was painful to watch how he had no credible justification.  Don’t forget to give  Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, his Miranda rights and get him a good lawyer. Let’s pretend his claims to be associated with al Queda is just tough talk and braggadocio.

The reality is that whenever America fought a war and politicians pulled punches (e.g., Viet Nam) we lost.

Things are Working Swell

Janet Napolitano, Obama’shead of Homeland Security had this to say, according to the New York Times

“The system has worked really very, very smoothly over the course of the past several days,” Janet Napolitano, the Homeland Security secretary said, in an interview on “This Week” on ABC. Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman, used nearly the same language on “Face the Nation” on CBS, saying that “in many ways, this system has worked.”

How chilling is that?  What exactly does she mean by the system worked?  She refers to the number of organizations that were alerted after the fact.  How about notifications before the fact?  How about listening to the terrorist’s own father who reported him to the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria.  How about denying him a visa?  Or is Napolitano too busy adding funeral homes to her list of organizations to notify after the fact?

Where’s Obama?

If there’s a chance Chicago might get the Olympics, don’t worry, Obama’s on a plane to give it the old presidential push!  If there’s a Nobel Prize to pick up, Obama is your man!  If there is a terrorist attack on our country, hey, don’t bother me I’m on vacation in Hawaii.

Some pundits on the news pointed out that President Bush didn’t speak out against the shoe bomber, Richard Reid, for several days, so cut Obama some slack.  The problem is that no one doubted for a minute that Bush was engaged in the War on Terror, some even saying he was obsessed.  Well that obsession kept us safe for seven years.  In less than one year we have had Fort Hood and now this airline bombing.

Furthermore, why is Eric Holder making such a monumental decision regarding trying the 9/11 terrorists in New York?  Why isn’t this Obama’s decision?  Just like so much in this administration, Obama campaigns and gives speeches, and Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Eric Holder make policy decisions on their own.

Here’s to the Heroes

The heroes in this case were a Dutch citizen and the flight attendants, who subdued the terrorist and extinguished the fire.  To quote again from the Wall Street Journal:

The lesson here is the same as Flight 93 on 9/11 and shoe-bomber Richard Reid, which is that civilians willing to act in their own self-defense are a crucial part of “homeland security.”

May I suggest that the statists drop their efforts to weaken the 2ndAmendment?  As part of  “homeland security” we may need to bear arms like at no time since the Civil War.

Over the past eleven months, have you ever gotten a feeling that you are watching a magician, rather than a president run our country?  As any practitioner of the art of the illusionist will tell you, one of the key things is to keep the audience distracted.  Have them watch the left hand, while the right is slipping the coin into the pocket.  The Obama Administration is about to unleash their greatest trick yet, trying Khalid Sheik Mohammed in civil court in New York for the 9/11 attack on America.  Why?

The Greatest Show On Earth

The trial will become an absolute three ring circus, with all the world watching closely.  The liberal pundits say, “this is our chance to show the world our justice system.  We can demonstrate how civilized we are, and show the Muslim world how fair we are.”  Really?

Remember to the footage in the Muslim world immediately following the collapse of the World Trade Center towers.  They were dancing in the street, laughing and singing, shouting praise to Allah.  What do you think the reaction will be if Khalid Sheik Mohammed, jumps up in court and screams out, “Kill the infidels! This is a fraud meant to disguise these devil’s tricks!”  Do we let him ramble with a global audience?  Do we have the bailiffs wrestle him to the ground?  Do we put him in restraints for the rest of the trial?  Who exactly is going to show the world what?

We Have No Secrets

In a civilian trial there is a process called discovery, where the defense is told everything the prosecution plans on bringing to court, including witnesses, so that the defense has a chance to prepare their rebuttal case.  How much of the CIA’s methods and contacts are we prepared to reveal to the world and to Khalid Sheik Mohammed’s allies?  Or, how much are we not going to use in order to protect that information and at the same time increase the chances that he will be acquitted?

Can Anybody Say O.J.?

Do you remember the O.J. Simpson trial?  A slam-dunk if ever there was one.  There was blood evidence, DNA evidence, means, motive, opportunity, it couldn’t get any easier.  But what happened?  Judge Lance Ito, lost control of his court room in the kleig lights of national television.  One of O.J.’s attorneys or advisors told O.J. to stop taking his arthritis medication  so his hands would swell and then the famous glove trick, abra cadabra, “If the glove doesn’t fit, you must acquit.”  What happened after that trial?  Dancing in the streets of the black community.

The Jury Pool

Are Muslims going to be excluded from the jury pool?  If so, on what grounds and would a judge allow it?  In the O.J. case we had what was called jury nullification, where a jury handed up a verdict not based on the evidence presented, but based on a social determination.  O.J. was a symbol for all black men put on trial and all past injustices.  He was a sports hero to millions and he wasn’t going down, no matter what.  What if a someone with strong beliefs sees disrupting the outcome of the trial as the new jihad?  Don’t use suicide bombers in New York, that’s so Middle East, let’s kill them softly by getting Khalid Sheik Mohammed acquitted or a give them a hung jury.  What better way to humiliate the Great Satan.  It will be like David and Goliath all over again.

The Real Trial

Or is it really the Bush Administration that Obama wants to put on trial?  The Obama administration’s popularity is sinking link a stone.  The stimulus package was a bust.  Cap and Trade is a disaster.  Health care a debacle.  Tea Party’s are breaking out all over.  The Democrats got trounced in Virginia and New Jersey, and even New York’s 23rd is still alive as recounts have dramatically closed the gap. A show trial of the Bush Administration is just what the Obama Adminstration needs to keep the focus off what they are really doing.

This is a tragedy and a travesty and there should be no end to the shame heaped upon this administration if they follow through on this.

As FDR Tinkered with the Economy, the Depression Dragged On for Years

As pointed out in a previous post, the Department of Labor does not and cannot count the number of jobs that have been saved by any action or policy.  But that doesn’t stop the svengali of spin Barack Obama:

“Now I know that there are some who {THERE’S THE STRAWMAN – notation mine}, despite all evidence to the contrary, still don’t believe in the necessity and promise of the recovery act,” Mr. Obama said, “and I would suggest to them that they talk to the companies who, because of this plan, scrapped the idea of laying off employees and in fact decided to hire employees. Tell that to the Americans who receive that unexpected call saying, ‘Come back to work.’ “ — NY Times June 9, 2009

He knows he is spending an enormous amount of money, it is having little effect, and people are beginning to notice.  Only about 10% of the money has been spent, unemployment continues to rise, interest rates are starting to climb due to the massive borrowing by the federal government, so what’s the President to do?  Go back on the campaign trail and once again convince the American people he is someone he is not.  An inexperienced executive, who wants government to tighten its grip on our lives and squeeze out the last drops of our liberty.

“The president’s top aides spent the weekend trying to tamp down expectations that the unemployment rate would turn around anytime soon. One adviser, Austan Goolsbee, told Fox News the nation was in for “a rough patch,” a phrase often invoked by Mr. Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush” — NY Times, June 9, 2009

Tamp down expectations?  Wait a minute.  Wasn’t this the stimulus package that had to be past immediately?  Wasn’t this the plan that no one in Congress had time to read before voting on it?  Wasn’t this the plan that Congress had to sign immediately or catastrophe would result, but President Obama could wait four days to sign so that the photo op could be set up and the teleprompters put in place?  Now his aides are telling us it’s not going to work as they told us?  I’m shocked, shocked!

“The Obama administration is continuing to fabricate job creation numbers related to the stimulus,” Tony Fratto, a deputy press secretary in the Bush administration, said in an e-mail message to reporters. He added, “Their so-called models would not stand the light of day.”

The administration maintains that 150,000 jobs were either created or saved in the first 100 days after Mr. Obama signed the stimulus bill on Feb. 17. The 600,000 figure the president discussed Monday is not new; it was made public by Mr. Biden on May 13. It includes 125,000 part-time summer jobs for teenagers, which the administration counts as 62,500 full-time job equivalents.

Created or Saved?

Well which is it, were jobs created or saved?  Created jobs are counted by the Department of Labor.  As a small business owner, I know the paperwork that has to be prepared when you add a new employee: W-4, W-9, state filings,etc.  However, if I am a business owner and I am thinking about laying people off and I change my mind, where is that reported?  If I want to know that, President Obama tells me to go take a private poll of companies and ask them if they changed their minds. ARE WE SUPPOSED TO FALL FOR THIS?

So while the economy sheds hundreds of thousands of jobs, he tells us don’t worry, his plan is adding 125,000 part time summer jobs for teenagers.  Have you gotten the hope and change you voted for?

Don't Anyone Dare Say Government Caused This Mess

You can never solve a problem if you do not face up to the full scope of the problem.  In listening to President Obama, and reading liberal columnists like Maureen Dowd, in the description of what caused the current economic calamity, the government is always given a pass.

We are in an economic morass because of the eight years of failed Bush policies, greed on Wall Street, tax breaks for the rich, etc.  Government’s culpability which, I believe, is really the gravamen of our economic problems is never mentioned at all.  Democrats and Liberals don’t dare point to Democrats and liberal policies as having anything to do with the collapsing economy.  That is why they always say that this is the worst economy since the Great Depression, as they also said when Clinton ran for President.  They don’t dare say it is the worst economy since Jimmy Carter, since that would remind the American people that the Democrats screwed up that one as well.

Unmentionable Causes of the Current Economic Mess

• Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac out of control.  Explosive increases in debt taken on under the leadership of Franklin Raines (Democrat), and Jaime Gorelick (Democrat), remember she also gave us the firewall between the CIA and FBI that hamstrung the investigation of al Queda.  Raines made over $90 million while at Fannie Mae and at the same time was accused of overstating earnings by $10.6 billion.  So, where’s the demand for a clawback of Raines’s salary?
• Barney Frank (Democrat) and Chris Dodd (Democrat) — Frank blocked every attempt to put in place greater regulation over Fannie Mae.  The Bush Administration tried to increase regulation over Fannie Mae, but Frank blocked it.  What you hear today is that the reason for the economic problems are a lack of regulation.  Chris Dodd got VIP mortgage treatment from Countrywide mortgage before they went belly-up.  Asked to come clean on the mortgages, Dodd first said sure, we’ll get around to it.  Then he made some papers available for viewing, but not copying, and has since clammed up.
• Community Reinvestment Act — Carter (Democrat) administration program to push home ownership for low income people, by forcing banks to report how much they were offering loans in low income neighborhoods and face the consequences if it wasn’t enough.
• Janet Reno (Democrat) — in the Clinton Administration Reno threatened action against financial institutions if they weren’t lending enough low income individuals.  What bank doesn’t want to be publicly branded a racist institution?

So we have homeowners, who should have never qualified for a mortgage, about to receive bailouts from all the responsible people who took mortgages they could afford, when they could afford them.  Do you ever hear about any of this cast of characters mentioned by President Obama or the main stream media? No.  It wasn’t the government actively pushing social policy on those people least able to handle it.  It was greedy banks and unscrupulous lenders, trying to avoid being branded racists, who took advantage of these poor ignorant people.  Perhaps if the government hadn’t destroyed our education system, these people might have read what they were about to sign.

How Do you Solve Only Half a Problem?

As these characters are never mentioned as having a role in the problem, how can you ever hope to fix the problem if these bad actors are still going about their business doing what caused the crisis and blaming everyone else.  President Obama demonstrates his inexperience more profoundly every day, seemingly making things up as he goes along.  That is not leadership and what we need now in times of crisis is leadership.  Obama has never shown the courage or willingness to take on his own party.  Without rooting out these characters and really fixing the whole problem, it will only happen again down the road.

What we need now is a leader.  Someone who actually has experience running the executive branch of a state.  Someone who is not afraid to take on the entrenched power of their own party and has succeeded in doing so.  Is there anyone out there who fits that bill?  Gee, that sounds like Sarah Palin.

The balloons and bunting have been picked up, the Washington Mall has been swept, the ball gowns put away.  The campaign, the election, the historic celebration are now in the history books.  It’s time to govern.  Sadly, with only three weeks in office, President Obama’s lack of experience is on full display.

Due to the looming financial crisis, the transition in power was unprecedented in the level of cooperation between the departing Bush administration and the incoming Obama team.  Obama said he needed the second half of the $700 billion, Bush put in the request.  Everyone knew what problem number one was.  The economy was in crisis.

When Dealing With a Crisis, You Lead, You Don’t Delegate

When United Airways Flight 1549, which would end up in the Hudson River, was climbing after takeoff, the co-pilot was at the controls.  When the plane struck a flight of birds and lost power, Captain Sullenberger cooly said two words, “My aircraft.”  The co-pilot responded, “Your aircraft,” the captain took the controls and the first officer then set about trying to re-start the engines.

In the midst of this economic crisis, that President Obama keeps saying we have to fix now, he let Nancy Pelosi run the show, while he took a victory lap, visiting the White House press pool, writing exectutive orders closing Guantanamo, and speaking to el Arabiya.  Nancy Pelosi was furiously stuffing the stimulus turkey with pork, and President Obama was inviting Republicans in for tea, thinking that by doing so, a new era of bipartisanship would emerge.

In several corporate jobs that I have had there were times of crisis.  If we had to drastically cut expenses to deal with the crisis, it was all hands on deck.  It wasn’t see what you can do and get back to me.  It was, “Be on the conference call at 3PM prepared to tell the Chief, how you are meeting your expense reduction targets.”  All senior managers were on the call and all got a turn to tell the Chief what they were contributing or, gulp, where they were falling short. If you were falling short, make no mistake, you better have a damn good reason and whether or not you did, your future career was now under a microscope.  The point is, like Captain Sullenberger, in times of crisis, the leader is unmistakenly in charge.

President Obama let Nancy Pelosi craft this disaster, without strong guidelines of what he would or would not accept, and did not demand that Republicans be involved from the start.  You reap what you sew.  Now he is scrambling to drag this stinking corpse across the finish line and it’s not pretty.

Why did this happen?  Because President Obama was a Community Organizer.  He never ran a business. He never held an executive position in government.  His gossamery resume was obvious, but ignored.  Sarah Palin must be shaking her head in disbelief.

Running Back to Safety Zone of Campaigning

Barack Obama was a master on the campaign trail, first dispatching Hillary Clinton, and then deftly outmaneuvering John McCain.  So what does the inexperienced man do when he’s under stress?  Go back to what he’s good at.  This week we saw President Obama back on the campaign trail, with the same rhetoric.  The problem is, you can take a fair degree of license with what you say on the campaign trail.  When you govern, you have to deal with reality.  George Bush is gone.  Bashing Bush may have gotten Obama elected, but he’s got to put that one out to pasture.  His claim that tax cuts caused this financial problem, and that the past eight years have been an economic disaster, just don’t hold up.  It makes him look clueless.  Sure it fires up the base, but so what.  We need solutions, not pep rallies.  Tax cuts boosted the economy for Kennedy, for Reagan, for Bush.  In short, they work.  Obama may not like them, but they work.  To say otherwise is like hanging a sign over his head, saying Under Construction.

Cabinet Picks

And the late night talk show hosts were wondering what they were going to do without Bush in office.  The hits just keep coming.  Once again, you have to ask, who’s in charge?  How did all of these slip through the cracks?  Richardson, Geithner, Daschle, Soldis, Nancy Killefer, Eric Holder.  Sure it’s noble that Obama took responsibility for Daschle.  But if you stay with him too long you look, uh, inexperienced?  With all of these problems, someone’s head should roll.  The President is delegating what he shouldn’t and what he should delegate is a mess.

International

President Obama was supposed to usher in a new era of harmony in our relations with other countries.  But what has happened?

• Ahmadinijad — Candidate Obama said he would talk with Iran without preconditions.  Ahmadinijad said he wanted an apology before he would meet with Obama
• Several countries harshly criticize the stimulus package and its “Buy American” provision, raising the spector of the Smoot-Hawley tariffs that deepened the Great Depression
• Iran shoots a missle into space to celebrate the Iranian revolution, with the subtext, “That was when we boldly took over your Embassy and held it for 444 days during the weak presidency of Jimmy Carter.”
• Pakastan releases A.Q. Khan the nuclear proliferator in a snub to the U.S.
• Kyrgyzstan tells U.S. to close military base that is key supply route to Afghanistan

I hope President Obama is a quick study, or we’re in for a long grim four years.

Upon taking office, what the President does as his first action often sets the tone of his presidency, indicating what he thinks is important.  Bill Clinton chose to wade into the debate on gays in the military.  Of all the things of importance to the country that he could have chosen to work on first, that was his pick.

President Obama chose to close down Guantanamo Bay, saying we needed to restore our image in the world.  It seemed to matter little to him that under President Bush we had gone over seven years without an attack.  Shortly after that he quietly signed another order that struck down a Bush administration ban on giving money to international groups that performed or provided information on abortion.

So let’s look at these two together, since they were both done in Obama’s first week in office. To restore the United State’s moral leadership in the world, we need to go easy on terrorists and fund the killing innocent unborn babies.  Evil gets a pass, innocence gets snuffed out.  Are we feeling more proud yet?  Are we holding our heads higher?

There is a consistency there, in that these terrorists have no problem strapping bombs on themselves, wading into a crowd of innocent men, women, and children, blowing themselves up and taking as many innocents with them as they can.  So protecting these people, and not making them uncomfortable while interrogating them, even if it would spare innocent lives, is somehow against our principals?

The point could not have been driven home any more starkly than by Nancy Pelosi when talking about the economic stimulus package making its way through Congress said:

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi boldly defended a move to add birth control funding to the new economic "stimulus" package, claiming "contraception will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government."

So now we know, abortion stimulates the economy.  How long before we can hear Joe Biden tell us, “C’mon, do your patriotic duty, pay more taxes, have an abortion, we’re in an economic pinch here.”

When the founders wrote about “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness,” life is what they put first, liberty, which really means smaller government, they put second, and the Pursuit of Happiness third.  I don’t see how you can square that with Life for terrorists, death to babies, more government and more taxes.

I was wondering how long it would take for Barack Obama’s lack of experience or a power base to manifest itself, but it appears the moment has arrived, and the problems keep coming.

His recent announcemnt or leak by his aides that Leon Panetta is his choice for head of the CIA is confounding, to say the least.  Panetta may be a nice man, and a good administrator, but in the midst of the War on Terror who but a rookie would put a rookie as head of the CIA?  Apparently Obama couldn’t push back those on the left who want no one who agrees with the Bush Administration in the post.  Two other potential appointees got hooted down by Obama’s supporters so he had to go with this pick.  The CIA is notorious for not liking outsiders.  Panetta has no intelligence experience, other than listening in on security briefings as Clinton’s Chief of Staff.

Bill Richardson withdraws his name from nomination as Commerce Secretary, due to a gathering scandal.

Eric Holder as Attorney General pick approved pardons for the FALN terrorists while working in the Clinton Justice Department and now he is responsible for prosecuting terrorists.

The Blogojevich scandal doesn’t want to go away and now the Democrats are battling over whether or not they will seat the man appointed to replace Obama in the Senate

We have the Coleman/Franken fiasco in Minnesota; Charlie Rangel under investigation for not paying taxes despite being chairman of the committee that writes the tax laws (Ways and Means); an item in the NY Times about a donation to the Clinton library from an individual who benefited from legislation supported by Hillary Clinton…

How long before the press decides the honeymoon is over?

As Barack Obama builds his Administration team you can sense the frustration starting to build on the left and among those who are still paying attention.  In an article in yesterday’s New York Times, Obama Describes Team as Experienced Yet Fresh, you can anticipate the eloquent gymnastics you are about to read as you would watching the young Chinese girls at the Beijing Olympics.

The Perception of Change

As the agent of hope and change, some people are beginning to wonder that if this is so, why is he populating his adminstration with so many people from the Clinton administration, causing one pundit to ask if we wanted a return to the Clinton Administration we would have voted for Hillary.  The master politician responded to this line of thinking thusly, “Americans would be ‘rightly troubled’ if he overlooked experience to create the perception of change.’”   Let me see if I have this right.  If you actually change, it is a perception of change, but if you don’t change, it is real change?  I got it.

He went on to elaborate, “What we are going to do is combine experience with fresh thinking.  But understand where the vision for change comes from first and foremost:  It comes from me.”  Okay, let me take a hack at that one.  Barack Obama is bringing together all these people with long resumes in government, with years of experience, and confident in knowing what to do and how to do it, but they are all going to follow Barack Obama’s direction and apply fresh thinking to their settled ways.  Or might they say, yeah kid, go back to the Oval Office and we’ll call you when we need you.

The Voice of Experience

Painting the picture further Obama says, “I suspect that you would be troubled and the American people would be troubled if I selected a Treasury secretary or a chairman of the National Economic Council at one of the most critical economic times in our history who had no experience in government whatsoever.”  But an inexperienced president?  No problem.  Even JFK, who was elected the youngest president in our history, had served one full term in the Senate, was reelected, and was two years into his second term before becoming president.  And he had a pretty rocky time between the Bay of Pigs, his Vienna meeting with Kruschev, the Cuban Missile Crisis and Viet Nam, in less than three years.  Barack Obama was four years into his first term and half of that time he spent running for president.  Should we not be concerned at the lack of experience at the top?

The Definition of Freshness

To prove his point about the freshness of hope and change, he spoke of Paul Volker.  Now, I think very highly of Paul Volker.  I believe it was he who got inflation under control after the disasterous Carter Administration economic policies.  Obama appointed Volker to lead his economic advisory board.  At 81 years old, he is the epitome of freshness.  How is that you wonder?  Obama masterfully spins it this way, “Paul Volker hasn’t been in Washington for quite some time and that’s part of the reason he can provide a fresh perspective.”  So where does that leave Obama?  Is he stale because he has been in Washington or his he fresh because he has been out campaigning for the last two years?

To cap it off in a question and answer period Obama said, according to the Times, “his [Obama's] call for new ways of thinking on the economy should not be interpreted as a reflection of frustration and disappointment with the Bush administration’s recent economic-recovery efforts.  He signaled his support for the latest $800 billion government bailout plan, which is intended to provide new lending for consumers as well as push down home mortgage rates.”

Anyone Out There Feeling Buyer’s Remorse?

So the purveyor of hope and change wants us all to believe that bringing back the Clinton administration is change; that 81 year old Paul Volker is fresh, but 72 year old John McCain is ancient; that Bush is the cause of all that is wrong with America, but fresh thinking should not be interpreted as frustration with Bush.

My sense has been that Barack Obama was painting himself into a corner.  All the while he believed that with his adroit political and verbal skills he would be able to slip out of the corner unnoticed.

The Democrats have only held the White House for eight of the last twenty-eight years.  So realistically, where else would Obama go for experienced executives?  With no executive experience himself, it’s not like he can bring colleagues in from his past executive positions, like Carter from Georgia, Reagan from California, Clinton from Arkansas, and Bush from Texas.  With only four years in Washington, two of them spent on the road campainging for president, it’s not like he built a network of experienced executive branch contacts there either.

He is also in the precarious position of having built up expectations so high, there is really no where for his job approval ratings to go, once he takes office, but down.  In addition to all this, he has to watch his left flank.  There are a lot of grumbling noises coming from that direction from a bunch of people with balled up IOUs in their fists, thinking we got you here, where’s the payback?

For all the Bush bashing that has gone on since September 11, 2001, it is a pretty sure bet that when he leaves office on January 20, 2009, part of his legacy will be that he kept us safe for the last seven years.  The fundamental difference between the polices of the Bush administration and those of Clinton and Carter was that Bush saw it as a war, Clinton and Carter as crimes.  On a war footing, you take the battle to your enemies with the objective of destroying them.  On a law and order footing, you investigate the crime after the fact, arrest suspects, give them their Miranda rights, put them on trial, and if you are lucky, they may spend some time in jail.

Law and Order

In 1979, where it all started, Iranian “students” took over the U.S. Embassy and held it for over 400 days.  Jimmy Carter tried to negotiate a settlement, sponsored a botched rescue, and saw the hostages finally released his last hour in office.  The Iranians didn’t want to be holding American hostages when Ronald Reagan was president.  Reagan would have seen the taking of the U.S. Embassy as an invasion on U.S. soil, which is what our Embassies are.  He would not have tolerated a ragtag bunch of radical students occupying U.S. soil.

From that, and Somalia, Osama bin Laden saw the U.S. as a paper tiger that would cut and run if hit hard.  Clinton’s law and order approach can be seen in the response to the first World Trade Center bombing and the constructing of a “wall” between the CIA and the FBI.

War Footing

President Bush saw the attacks on the U.S. as a war.  He mobilized the country and struck back hard.  By going on offense rather than hanging back playing defense, he has kept the enemy pinned down in Iraq and Afganistan, while simultaneous rooting them out aggressively wherever they went.  Those captured on the battlefield were sent to Guantanamo, where they were interrogated and held.  Lawyers in the U.S. began to complain that these prisoners were being held without being charged and that was unconstitutional.  Again, that is seeing it from a law and order perspective.  On a war footing, the enemy that is captured on the battlefield is held until the end of hostilities, like we held Japanese and German prisoners during WWII.  If it takes 50 years until the war is won and hostilities ended, then they should be held for 50 years.

Rooting Them Out

In trying to prevent another attack at home, Bush also aggressively sought to disrupt their operations.  Part of that process was to intercept their communications and learn what they were up to.  This caused an uproar over eavesdropping on Americans without a warrent.  However, the program was designed to intercept international phone calls, even if one end was in the U.S.  For example, if an Al Queda terrorist is captured or killed on the battlefield but their cell phone is recovered and their cell phone has an address book in it, the administration would set up all the numbers in the address book to be monitored and calls listened to. The purpose was to keep all Americans safe.

Many on the left believe that people in the Bush administration should be prosecuted for this practice.  They call this activity criminal.

Who Are Your Enemies?

President Bush tried to prevent our enemies, those who wished to kill as many of us as possible, from doing us harm.  He knew our enemies to be deadly and ruthless.

And then you have Joe Wurzelbacher, aka Joe the Plumber.  Joe the Plumber had the audacity to ask Barack Obama a question about how Obama’s policies would affect people like Joe.  Pretty dangerous stuff, no?  Since that chance encounter, Joe the Plumber has been investigated by six Ohio state agencies.  Did you see the ACLU representative on the evening news demanding what the Obama campaign knew about this and when they knew it?  Did you see Chris Matthews slamming his hand on his desk and saying, “This is AMERICA, not the Soviet Union!  We don’t investigate citizens because of their political beliefs.”?  Did you hear Senator Dick Durban rise in the senate to decry what happened to Joe the Plumber and compare it to the Nazis, the Soviet Gulags, and Pol Pot?

Neither did I.